


Double Vision

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2015 [15]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angels, Apocalypse, Community: wishlist_fic, F/M, Immortal Buffy, Loki Meet Loki, Magic, Not Beta Read, Prompt Fic, Sequel, Temporary Character Death, What's Canon again?, season five, universe jumping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:28:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5483399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Buffy and Loki skip universes and meet... well, Loki.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Vision

**Author's Note:**

> For _dharkapparition_ who asked for Buffy and Loki surfing the branches of Yggdrasil and running into Gabriel past 'death'. You said season five was okay and then it went kind of sideways and I didn't even notice. 
> 
> I'm sorry if this isn't what you wanted. I could try again?

+

Travelling along the branches of Yggdrasil sounds all majestic and wonderful and magical until you figure out it really, really isn’t. 

In fact, Harry Potter said it better when describing apparition: it’s like being squeezed through a straw. Because the World Tree isn’t an actual tree and everything is magic but magic isn’t actually, you know, magical. 

Not for a long time, now. 

So Buffy digs getting to see all kinds of places, having Loki take her on adventures. Of course she does. They’ve been doing this for almost a century now. If she didn’t love it, she’d have stopped by now. 

They paused, for a while, to take care of the whole Thanos mess, and then hung around Earth and her friends until they started getting old and dying and she couldn’t go through that again. She watched it once, in her old universe, and as much as she loves Tony and the others, she couldn’t do it again.

They made Loki take her away and it’s been years since then.

She misses Earth. But she doesn’t want to go back because then she’d see evidence of the people she loved being dead and she doesn’t want to _know_. 

“Let’s slip into another universe,” she grouses as she lands, breakfast scorching acidly at the back of her teeth, stomach rebelling. “It’ll be fun and there’ll be another Earth for you to see.”

She squeezes her amulet tightly and uses that to ground herself as Loki, perfectly alright, the smug bastard, lands beside her. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“I hate you,” she declares, only for him to roll his eyes like he didn’t just use phenomenal amounts of power just to let her avoid her demons for a few more years. She makes a mental note for them to visit Fenrir when they get back to his – their – universe, because, well. Loki deserves nice things, too. 

“Of course you do,” and god, they’re like an old married couple, aren’t they? Is this why Thor kept laughing at them the last time they ran into him?

Once her breakfast is back where it’s supposed to be, Buffy straightens enough to look around. Not that there’s much to see. A dry grassy field, a few trees in the distance, a long, straight road just a bit to one side. Prairie, as far as the eye can see, and a dark sky wheeling above. Once, she would have been sure this was America, but she’s learned that a lot of places look like this, since then. She knows better now. There are plenty of place is Africa, Australia, even Asia and Europe, that look like this. 

“Any idea where we are and how far it’s to civilization?” she asks, after a good look around. 

The god next to her frowns into the darkness, pretending he can see better than she can, which is simply not true. It’s cute, though, because he might seriously think she doesn’t know he’s using magic instead of just his eyesight to read the area around them. 

They’ve been adventuring together, jumping between worlds, between realities, sometimes as heroes, sometimes as villains, for so long, that she’s figured out most of his tricks decades ago. 

Not all of them, mind you, just like he hasn’t figured out all of hers, but most. 

And she can _see_ him flicking his wrist down by his side, sending out the scanning spell, or whatever it is. While she politely waits for him to announce there’s a city some miles this way or that, he cocks his head, forehead creasing. 

This is not part of the usual show.

“Lokes?”

He shakes his head minutely, strains as if listening to something she can’t hear.

After a long beat, he shakes abruptly, like Fenrir when he gets wet, disrupting whatever has come over him. She touches his shoulder, grounding questioning, hand already on her pendant. 

She can have them out of this place in a second and if necessary, keep them bouncing around until he has regained enough energy to propel them across universes again. Unlike Loki’s teleportation spells, the pendant doesn’t rely on Buffy’s strength to work. Dawn made sure of that before letting Buffy have it. 

He gives another shudder under her hand, then stills again. “There is someone chanting my name,” he offers, quietly. “Praying to me.”

Okay. Unusual in this day and age on this planet, but, whatever. The internet did strange things to dying cultures and religions, Buffy knows that all too well. The things people with an internet connection revive on accident, seriously. 

Also, this is another universe. For all they know, Christianity might have never caught on.

“So?”

He spins abruptly in her hold, gaze meeting hers, startled. “It’s another god.”

The slayer is about ask what they’re saying, when he starts murmuring without prompting, “Please be okay, please be alive, damn you, Loki, damn you, don’t you dare die, too.”

“Sounds like your parallel universe buddy got himself in a sticky spot,” Buffy announces, suddenly glad Buffy Summers was never born in Loki’s native universe. Hanging around Earth as a superhero with a mortal, regular Jane version of herself running around would have been weird. 

She shrugs it off, like so much other weirdness. “Wanna go save him?”

Instead of a verbal answer, Loki takes hold of the hand on his shoulder and with a flash of light, they’re both – 

\- sitting in the back of a classic car, with a dark-haired, dark-skinned woman squished between them, praying up a storm with a pissed-off expression on her face. Buffy just has time to register two hot guys – humans – in the front seat, before the car squeals to a halt in the middle of the road and there are guns aimed at her and Loki. 

“Rude,” she declares and turns to look at the woman, who has stopped muttering and tensed, ready for battle. A goddess of some sort. Buffy knows the feel of them by now. 

“You are praying to Loki,” Loki announces – and yeah, that’s weird, too – “Why?”

“Who the hell are you people and how the hell did you get in my car?” one of the hot guys asks. 

Buffy can take that one, “I’m Buffy, and my friend on the other side of the well-dressed goddess is Loki of Asgard, Brother of Thor. We heard you praying and decided to see what this dimension’s Loki is up to. So where is he?”

“You’re Loki?” the taller guy in the passenger seat blurts, wide-eyed and, frankly, looking like he’s just about done. With everything. 

“Indeed I am.”

“And how do we know you’re not just another asshole out to kill us to stop Lucy from taking over?” Driver demands. 

“Did you say ‘this dimension’s’? Are you from another dimension? Shouldn’t you look like Gabriel then?”

“You don’t,” Loki parries the same instant Buffy wants to know, “Who’s Gabriel?”

“Loki. Gabriel. Trickster archangel bag of dicks. Whatever.” Driver looks just as done as the other guy and really, Buffy decides with a closer look, both of them are run down, exhausted and obviously not at their peaks. 

The goddess next to her, who is strangely quiet, also looks tired. There’s some major shit going down, her spidey senses insist. 

“Look,” she cuts off Loki’s undoubtedly scathing parry. “We’re here to help for now. Where’s your Loki. Gabriel.” 

Weird. It seems that, no matter what universe, Loki will always be a changeling.

Goddess Lady grabs Loki’s hand then and her eyes flash a golden red for a brief moment. Loki nods, reaches around her to grab Buffy and there goes the straw-squeezing again. 

They’re in some kind of overly dramatic conference room. There’s drapes and everything. There’s also a flakey dude – literally, his face is flaking off – and two identical guys. Buffy has seen enough of Loki’s copycat tricks that her mind jumps to ‘magic’ before it jumps to ‘twins’ and she guesses that’s how she knows which one is which in this fight. 

Because it is a fight. The Lokis have shiny, shiny knives and the flaking one sneers at the version in front of him, “I know where your heart truly lies.”

Superhero 101: the cheesy one-liners are a surefire way to identify the bad guys. Only apparently this Loki lives under a rock, because he doesn’t get the threat at all and Buffy has to leap out of the shadows and plant herself smack in front of the Loki sneaking up on the bad guy and three Lokis are really too much for anything to make much sense anymore and then – 

Bam. 

Shiny, shiny knife right into her heart. 

The Loki she’s shielding screams in surprise or pain, something, the bad guy frowns fiercely and then her Loki is there, kicking him away and grabbing onto both of them, teleporting them right back to that field. Well, she thinks it’s that field. It’s kind of hard to tell, with a blade in her chest. 

Clueless Loki gently lowers her down, an expression of shock and grief on his face. “Why did you do that? And who are you people?”

Buffy smiles at him, which probably falls flat because she can taste blood in her mouth – dying is so gross – and offers, “I have a weakness for Lokis. Even if that was really obvious and you should have known he was going to turn.”

Then her Loki is there, grabbing onto one of her hands and removing the blade with a swift, efficient movement and Buffy dies for a little while. 

The next time she notices anything but being dead, she’s in a room. A motel room. Yech. The bed is so disgusting, she can smell it despite lying on it face up. Loki – hers – is sitting next to her, perched on the edge, his hand on her chest. 

Not in a gropey way, but in a notice-when-you-start-breathing-again way. Buffy doesn’t die often, these days, but when she does, Loki gets worried. He also changed both their clothes. Hers are non-bloody and mended, his are casual jeans and a black t-shirt. Arrayed around them are the two guys from the car and the Clueless Loki, all staring. 

She groans and moves to sit up. “Hey,” she manages, but only after Loki helps her get upright, “it’s rude to stare at the dead girl.”

Loki, pressing his face into her temple, snorts. “Less dead now,” he murmurs and yeah. Okay. 

“Formerly dead girl. Where’s the goddess?”

Clueless Loki frowns. “Kali beat it back home. Doesn’t want anything to do with this apocalypse. Not after seeing all her friends slaughtered like chickens.” He sighs. “I told them this was a shit idea, but do they ever listen to me? Nooooo!”

He snaps his fingers, catches the Mars bar that appears in midair and proceeds to ferociously wolf it down. Someone likes to eat their feelings. 

“Apocalypse?”

“The Christian one,” Loki supplies, sounding bored as he finally backs off her and leaves her to sort herself out. The clothes he magics onto her never sit quite right.

Eugh. Angels. Demons. What a drag. “So they guy with the flakey face was…?”

“Lucifer,” the shorter of the two human offers with a grimace of disgust. 

Buffy turns to her Loki. “Honey, I pissed off the Devil.”

“Shame on you,” he tells her solemnly. “Whatever shall we do now.” It’s so deadpan, everyone stares at him for a moment.

“Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?” the taller human asks. 

Buffy shrugs. “We have abrasive personalities. Also, once you’ve reduced Odin Allfather to incoherent screaming, a lot of deities just tend to be unwelcoming on principle. No-one likes to piss Odin off.” She pauses. “Except Loki.”

Clueless Loki looks at her Loki. “This is really weird.”

Nods all around. Buffy bites back a snickers. “Okay. Apocalypse,” she offers, before the awkwardness becomes so bad, either Loki feels the need to do something drastic. “You planning on stopping it?”

It’s been a while since she got in a good, old-fashioned ass-kicking. 

+


End file.
